Well, we survived the move. In an effort not to be whiny I will refrain from giving you the gory details. I will also refrain from using words like evil, arduous, and evil. Instead I will show you a picture of Julie finger painting. See, isn’t that better than talking about how horrible moving is?
Thanks to Pinterest for the idea.
Just a quick break to say hi and tell you all about our new addiction. Thanks to Jenna for this one.
At some point in the future, I will look back at this time in our lives and marvel at the insanity of it all. The last three years have been an emotional roller-coaster. Occasionally a roller coaster that feels like it’s careening out of control.
I’ve talked about some of it before. About the emotional ups and downs that led us to a drastic realigning of our life and career goals. Giving up on a dream is hard, even when that dream ends up being something you don’t want. I always said that if an academic career became untenable I would bow out. The problem is that I’m stubborn. It took a year of true insanity for me to recognize the previous years of unhappiness. I needed that cosmic kick in the pants and luckily Someone knows me well enough to deliver.
The past year has been about rediscovering what our life goals are and figuring out a way to achieve them. We’ve dredged up long-forgotten dreams of a hand-built house and homestead. We’ve also decided to pursue careers that would allow us to work from home.
We’ve spent the last several months feeling out possible paths to get from here to there. In the long-run we want to live close to friends and family. Although we have friends in Illinois, most of them are only here as an academic pit stop. So we would like to settle back in Kentucky where most of our family and friends are located.
We’ve explored several options that didn’t work out:
We eventually decided to stay in Chambana for a few years and bide our time. After an exhaustive house search, we finally found a house we could afford with a large enough yard for kids, dogs, and chickens to run around in and enough southern exposure for a garden. An offer was made and accepted literally the day before we were going to put in an offer. Cosmic kick in the pants.
We were very let down. For about a week. Then we realized we aren’t willing to bide time – we’ve been doing that for years. And because of that a magical thing happened – Matt asked and got permission to take his job remote.
So now, less than 3 months from the day we very nearly bought a house in Illinois we’re moving to Kentucky and both of us are working from home. We’re not there yet but we’re definitely headed in the right direction. And if we survive the move, we’ll figure out the next step.
So there are costs to having too much stuff. But homesteading requires an assortment of stuff. Which brings us to the clutter conundrum. How can you have a homestead but not deal with the negative consequences of too-much-stuff?
Two words: organization and smart design. Ok, three. But you get the idea.
Organization is relatively easy to achieve. You need some equipment like shelving and boxes or bins. But these can be had for free or cheap with some creative reuse, Freecycling, and ingenuity. It takes some time, maybe a lot of time if you’re jumping on the bandwagon late in the game like we are, but it is doable.
The bigger problem is smart design. Conventional houses today were not designed for homesteading. A hundred years ago houses had pantries and cellars to store preserved foods, wine, beer, and extra cooking instruments; tools were stored in a shed or barn; and things like looms and sewing machines took the place of tvs and computers. Living in a townhouse with a tiny backyard gives us none of that. Most homes on the market aren’t much better. You end up spending valuable house space that is mortgaged and heated and attentively cared for on storing things. Exposing canned food to extreme temperatures is not a good idea but garden tools, canning kettles, extra fabric, and brewing equipment doesn’t need temperature control.
Although the natural building community has a lot of things right, they’re not doing much better than conventional homes on this front. Natural builders either try to mimic the design and feel (and problems) of conventional homes or they go just as far to the other extreme. I agree that we’d all be happier with smaller but well-designed spaces. However, acting as though homes larger than 600 square feet are universally reprehensible is impractical (and alienating to would-be converts). Incidentally, most of these people seem to be single or couples – no families. And I don’t see a lot of preserves sitting around in the those 30 square foot kitchens.
I agree with a lot of the sentiments and ideas in the natural building community. But I think we need to expand our understanding of natural and sustainable housing to encompass not just the houses themselves but the lives of the people living in them. Building a big house uses a lot of resources, yes, but so does shipping in food from long distances. A medium-sized house than can accommodate a pantry uses more resources in the short run but in the long run it means fewer carbon emission to grow and transport food.
So where does that leave us? We need a permaculture-like recipe for designing living spaces. Take two parts historic homestead, add a generous helping of natural building design, and a pinch of whimsy.
In practical terms this means:
In my last post I harped about the monetary and mental health costs of having too much stuff. However, not all stuff is bad. Especially in a homestead setting, some stuff is necessary and even desirable. Here’s a counterpoint to the clutter conundrum.
Let’s do a little thought experiment. I’m picturing my house with all it’s stuff. Now, let’s subtract out all the stuff we own because we homestead. There goes the closet of tools; the coat-closet-turned-pantry full of preserves, cider, beer, and wine; the brewing equipment in our storage unit; the kegerator in the dining room; the brewing grain stashed upstairs; the grain mill attached to the kitchen table; the dehydrator and canning supplies stashed away in closets; the fabric and sewing supplies in our bedroom; the yarn, knitting needles, and crochet hooks tucked away here and there; the loom in Julie’s room; there go the gardening tools and compost tumbler littering up the back porch; out with the soil amendments, seeds, and plant-starting lights filling up our storage unit; goodbye to the books that tell us how to use all these things.
What’s left? Two adults; one toddler; a big, yellow dog; and not much else. Yes there would still be clutter but not as much as you might think. Assuming that we still cooked mostly from raw ingredients, our kitchen would still be pretty packed with pans, knives, and various instruments of vegetative destruction and there would still be a small deep freeze in the toddler’s room. Three of the six closets in this house would be completely empty, though, and we’d have a lot more room without the loom. We could easily get rid of half the bookshelves. The storage unit wouldn’t be necessary either.
We would also have to buy a lot more things – more food, more beer, more clothing, and more entertainment, just to name a few. (Homesteading is our primary source of entertainment, after all.)
So when I talk about reducing clutter, I don’t mean getting rid of the homestead. I mean culling the items that aren’t earning their keep. Our dehydrator earns it keep – it gave us two bushels of dehydrated apples chips, peach chips, and fruit leather this year. Healthy snacks made from local foods. My knitting needles earn their keep – three hats and two pairs of socks since October. You get the idea.
Do we need a water filtration pitcher that we haven’t used in 5 years? How about a coat that’s been sitting in the closet for 7 years? Do we really need 5 spatulas? I’m pretty sure 2 will suffice.
That’s what I’ve been working on – culling out the stuff that’s unused, unnecessary, or unwanted. When we arrive at our new home we will be a leaner, meaner, (greener) homestead. Then it will just be a matter of managing the homestead clutter…
I’ve been spending a lot of time packing for our move in a couple of weeks (more on that later), so I’ve been thinking a lot about clutter – the accumulation of stuff to the point that you can no longer neatly stash it all away. Anyone who has seen our house knows that clutter is our natural state of being. Clutter can seem pretty harmless, after all it’s not like anyone died because their kitchen table contained a rotating assortment of odds and ends. As I’ve been sorting through the clutter, it has occurred to me that there is a cost to clutter – both monetary and mental.
First, the monetary. I don’t know about you but our house is packed to the gills. Almost every closet is lined with shelves full of stuff. Kitchen cabinets are overflowing. We have bookshelves in almost every room. Things are stashed under the bed, behind the couch, and in every nook and cranny. And still we have more stuff than will fit. So a few years ago we started renting a storage unit to store our extra stuff. For us (and many others) our clutter has a very real and very direct cost – the cost of renting a storage unit every month.
There are indirect monetary costs, as well. How many people buy a bigger house so they can fit all their stuff. More rooms, more closets, basements, attics. All of these give you more places to stash stuff but also come with higher costs. Bigger mortgage payments, more insurance, more heating, more electricity, and more upkeep. The costs build up over time. Maybe it’s just $10 a month of extra mortgage. Another $10 for the bigger heating bills. Need a new furnace, water heater, or roof? Those will be bigger so they’ll cost more. Want a bigger garage for your second car? You get all the costs of a bigger home plus the insurance and maintenance of a second car.
Then there are the indirect, indirect costs. We don’t usually think about the value of our time. Time is a given (or at least we act that way) so we take it for granted. More stuff means more time to pick up, clean, organize, and maintain stuff. A bigger house means more space to clean and maintain, as well. At $10 an hour (far below the living wage) even one extra measly hour a week translates into $520 a year. I don’t know about you, but I could spend a lot more than an hour just dusting my house every week.
Then there are the mental and time costs. I don’t know about you but I find it hard to relax when the floor is littered with toys, the tabletops are covered with stuff, and the clutter presses in from all sides. Do you find yourself unable to relax because of the clutter? Do you have to “get out” in order to unwind? In monetary terms stress has unseen costs as well – the cost of medications for stress-related conditions and the cost of vacations and “stress-relief activities”.
Putting clutter in perspective is helpful for people like me. By nature we are pack rats; the but-I-might-want-it-one-day kind of pack rat with some I-don’t-want-to-waste-things thrown in. When you look at an item and see dollar signs it makes you think. Does this item pull it’s weight enough to warrant the room and board it requires? A lot of items don’t make the cut. Even if you do want an item later, the savings of getting rid of all those things will more than cover the cost of repurchasing the few things that you do want down the road. And as for waste – well, that’s what Craigslist, Goodwill, and Freecycle are for.
It is actually very freeing to pick up an item and, instead of packing it away, toss it in the charity box.
We’ve had a lot of late nights lately. We’ve been up late gardening. We’ve been up late reorganizing the house (more on that later). We’ve been up late preserving. And we’ve been up late watching movies and knitting to relax after a long day of gardening, reorganizing, and preserving. Other than that last one, it’s been time well spent. The pantry and freezer aren’t quite bursting at the seams but they’re showing signs of strain.
As I blog we’ve got peaches in the dehydrator, more waiting to be made into preserves, and I’m waiting on water to boil so I can can tomatoes. Yesterday, I made made and froze tomato sauce. (Had to freeze instead of can since I didn’t use a recipe and couldn’t be sure of acidity.) Earlier this week I spent a whole day on green beans. A neighbor kindly let us have all that his garden could offer while he visited the Grand Canyon. As it turns out his garden could offer a lot – to the tune of 6 quarts in the freezer. We’ve spent all week turning a half bushel of peaches into peach leather, dried peach chips, and, now, peach preserves. Add that to the quick dill pickles, pickled beets, and jam in the pantry and the blackberries, strawberries, and rhubarb in the freeze.
Tonight will be another long night. Tomatoes will be canned. Peaches will be preserved. And we will grind grain and prep for brewing beer tomorrow after church. All while drinking beer and watching movies as cans boil on the stove and we turn the grain mill crank. A long night, sure, but a good one.
I’m trying to get back on the blogging bandwagon after falling off for two weeks. (Was it really two weeks?) As always, the more that’s going on around the homestead, the less time I have to write about it. It’s been a busy couple of weeks with work deadlines and other boring but necessary details. A good bit of our time has been spent out in the garden, though. I’ve not talked much about the garden this year so it’s time to catch up.
The best laid plans....
The gardening year got off to a good start by me throwing my back out and being laid up for two weeks right about planting time. And then we were out of town for a week. And then we were out of town for another week. Amazingly the seeds we had started survived despite levels of neglect that were extreme, even for us. The plant lamps helped immensely as did light timers.
Two seconds before seeds went flying.
With more than a month head start on us, the weeds have been a big problem this year. Add to that the near drought conditions and things haven’t been doing so great. More time in the garden would always help but nowadays I do my gardeningd with a toddler underfoot. Gardening with a toddler is an exercise in patience. Or futility. Not sure which.
Blackberry thief caught red faced.
So how are things doing? Well, normally we’re up to our eyeballs in blackberries but this year only our knees were covered. (Of course, a certain toddler learned quickly to pick and eat the berries so it’s a little hard to get exact numbers.) We only got 10 raspberries total. Tomatoes got planted out late and had problems with blossom drop so we’re just now starting to get some tomatoes ripening. And not that many either. The squash plants we had so carefully started all died in extended indoor seedling-hood and only one of the direct sown seeds started. Half the greens didn’t even sprout and the potatoes died when the spuds were just golf ball size. Beans, spring root crops, and spring cole crops didn’t even get planted.
Starting to perk up...
This year was hardly a wash though. As always, volunteer coriander and dill made a good showing. We also got a really good crop of peas, both from the ones we planted and the ones someone else planted accidentally in our garden plot. (Oops.) The peppers we started from seed are doing great as are the direct-seeded squash and the replacement squash plants we bought. Judging by the number of blooms and tiny, unripened fruits we may get a decent tomato and raspberry harvest yet this year. We just planted out the cole plants we had started for the spring. They managed to survive all summer thanks to light timers and plant lamps (not recommended) and are promising a good fall crop. Now we’re working on seeding fall crops: carrots, beets, peas, and greens.
Future gardener and chief mud pie maker
It was also a good gardening year is less tangible ways. Julie is growing up with almost daily outdoor time. She has eaten sugar snap peas fresh off the vine, braved over-zealous blackberry brambles to get fruit, made mud pies (well, mud at least), and picked flowers. (And green tomatoes, but that’s a post for another day.)
So how is our garden growing? Quite well, thanks.
Matt and I can get into some interesting discussions on the long drives to and from family visits. For instance, on a recent trip Matt was reading Cottage Economy by William Cobbett, an 1820′s book about household economy. (Get the ebook for free from Project Gutenberg.) For much of Southern Indiana Matt would read aloud snippets and we would discuss them. The most interesting discussion of the trip was our discussion of the fall of empires.
The most famous fallen empire is the Roman Empire. As the Roman’s expanded their Empire, they enslaved the peoples they conquered and shipped their resources to the heart of the Empire. By the end, the Roman’s were shipping much of their food from Africa and many other natural resources from other outlying areas of the Empire. Such a system is bound to fail. The heart of the Empire is cut off from the resources is relies on – either through the uprising of the subjugated people’s who produce these resources or through natural disasters and shipping delays – and the Empire crumbles from the inside out.
Moral of the story – when a people no longer produce their primary needs, they are as vulnerable as the weakest link in their supply chain. And when the people who produce the resources are also the poorest in the system, then the system is also vulnerable to social disasters. The bigger the system, the longer the supply chains, the more people involved, the more opportunity for failure. Heck, the only reason the Roman Empire lasted so long is that they offered conquered people’s a way to earn citizenship if they were good slaves. (The historical equivalent of rent-to-own.) As long as Rome kept expanding, there would always be some new slaves lower on the pecking order for the new citizens to lord over. I guess it took a while for them to realize they were all just working to support the select few at the heart of the Empire.
At the time that the British author wrote this book the British empire had shifted from one comprised of households each supplying a (usually large) portion of their own needs to one that was highly dependent on external inputs to maintain itself. Getting those external inputs required subjugation of peoples in distant lands with little to gain by the relationship and no real affinity to the British Empire. At a gross level, this is a system very similar to that of the Roman Empire prior to it’s fall and, sure enough, just like the Roman Empire, the British Empire fell when the exploited, subjugated people’s on the fringe of the empire rose up. In this case it was Gandhi instead of Visigoths but the effect was the same.
This would be nothing more than an interesting parallel drawn by two non-historians if this was the beginning and the end of the discussion. The discussion actually began when Matt pointed out that the “American Empire” is in a similar position to the position of the British Empire at the time this book was written. Most Americans rely on the American Empire (i.e. the ephemeral “market”) to supply their needs. In order to meet these needs, the American Empire relies on vast quantities of goods and services from peoples in distant lands with little or no connection to the American Empire. In our case, this relationship is held up by Free-trade agreements instead of slavery and colonization but the overall pattern is the same: the people at the heart of the empire, the American public, no longer provide directly for their own needs. Instead they rely on peoples in distant lands to produce their food and goods. These people are free citizens of other countries but they are still impoverished compared to the masters at the heart of the empire. How long til natural disaster cuts us off from the resources we need? How long til the peoples we have subjugated through unfair trading practices throw off their intergovernmental shackles? How long ’til the sweat shop workers rise up and toss our cheap plastic goods into the proverbial Boston Harbor?
Ok, now I’m mixing up my historical metaphors but hopefully you get the idea. A globalized system is no better an idea today than it was a couple of thousand years ago. A civilization comprised of households that cannot supply their own needs is subject to failure when natural or social disasters cut off resources. The bigger the empire, the more the external inputs, the more opportunity for breakdown in the system.
I just picked up this book from the library. How appropriate given my recent post about pantry stocking. I haven’t quite finished the book but so far I’m really liking it.
